“I cannot help it. I must go. I shall be wretched and good for nothing until I learn all there is to know. I am going now to tell Uncle August about it.”
He sought Mr. Huntress, and laid the whole matter before him, making known his desire, too, to go to New Mexico to see if he could gain any further clew.
Mr. Huntress sympathized heartily with him, and favored the project. He could well understand how restless and miserable Geoffrey would be until he had used every possible means to discover his parentage.
So he did all that he could to hasten and facilitate his departure, and even offered to accompany him; but Geoffrey frankly told him that he preferred to go alone.
He felt that if he must learn that any stigma rested on his birth, he could not bear to have any one, not even his kind friend, witness the struggle that must come with the knowledge. He could fight it best by himself.
He left the next day but one, but owing to delays both by rail and coach, he did not reach Fort Union until ten days later.
He made inquiries here for a man named William Dale, but for several days could gain no intelligence whatever regarding such a person.
At last he fell in with an old miner, by the merest accident, who had known a man by that name many years previous, and who directed him to that mining village already described.
Thither Geoffrey hastened at once, reaching it one evening just at sundown, and only a week after Everet Mapleson’s visit to the same place.
Here he learned something of Annie Dale’s story, for Everet’s inquiries and interest in the same person had revived memories regarding that sad romance, and it had become a common theme since.